Record numbers of NHS staff falling ill or isolating emphasises the devastating impact of Covid when it spreads rapidly.
The number of nurses, doctors, porters, cleaners, receptionists and administrators away from work doubled in a month.
All that disruption equals cancelled operations, in a health service where exhausted workers are struggling to cope with not only a 22-month pandemic, but with a life-sapping, decade-long Tory financial straitjacket too.
It isn’t only the NHS buckling. Every public service and most businesses are struggling.
Rail operators are unable to run timetabled trains and schools worry so many teachers will be absent that pupils will have to stay at home.
The Cabinet Office ordering public sector leaders to prepare plans for when one in four workers are off sick shows that this Covid crisis is far from over. It’s just mutating.
Don’t be fuels
When the cost-of-living crisis will be this year’s most important political issue, we need a Government that’s on the side of low and middle-income families.
That means taking action on rising energy bills. Yet a certain faction of right-wing Conservatives are wrong to target green fuel production as a source of savings.
The group includes climate change sceptics who ignore all the evidence that we must switch to cleaner, less polluting power.
Global warming will lead to ruinous weather extremes that will be far worse in the long term than higher energy bills now.
These Tories asked a valid question about bills but, as their leader Boris Johnson always does, came up with the wrong answers.
Stand & deliver
The return of standing in top-flight stadiums for the first time since the 90s made Chelsea’s thrilling clash with Liverpool yesterday a piece of history.
The only question now is whether football fans these days have the stamina to last a whole 90 minutes on their feet.
